‘Ghost Rider 2’ Is Happening, Casting of Villain Rides In

Ciaran Hinds (“Rome,” Harry Potter, also starring in Hammer Films’ The Woman in Black) is in negotiations to rev up Columbia’s Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Heat Vision adds that Italian actress-singer Violante Placido is also in talks to join the cast. The movie, featuring Nicolas Cage as the demonic biker anti-hero based on the Marvel comic, is a sequel to the 2007 movie and has Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor behind the cameras. The story sees Johnny Blaze, aka Ghost Rider (Cage), hiding out in remote Eastern Europe and struggling to repress his curse. Blaze is recruited by a sect to take on the devil (Hinds), who wants to take over his mortal son’s body on the boy’s birthday. Placido will play the boy’s mother. Neveldine and Taylor wrote the script, working off a story by David Goyer. The filmmakers are revving toward a late-November start, with shooting scheduled for Romania and Turkey.